Can the Calgary Stampeders get Grey Cup Revenge?
Winning a Week 2 regular season game isn’t exactly the ideal way to get revenge on a team that beat you to win the Grey Cup but its what the Calgary Stampeders will have to settle for this weekend in their Grey Cup rematch with the Toronto Argonauts at BMO Field in Toronto on Saturday. These two teams started off their seasons differently than the way they ended. The Argos went into Mosaic and suffered a one-score loss while the Stamps took until the 4th quarter to pull away from the TiCats and secure a victory. For the last five years each time Calgary has faced the Argos on the road they have won by a double-digit margin. They will look to continue that trend on Saturday but they will need to make some changes after a sloppy week one victory.
Calgary Stampeders Keys to Revenge
Lockdown S.J Green
One key difference from the last time these two teams played to now aside from the obvious significance of the game is the fact the Argos no longer have DeVier Posey. S.J Green is the biggest deep threat to this Calgary secondary who was allowed Jeremiah Masoli to throw a lot of 20+ yard passes in week one. Ricky Ray targeted S.J Green 12 times in week one but only managed to connect with him on five occasions. The Stampeders secondary needs shut down S.J Green and force Ray to throw to his secondary receivers.
Win the Field Position Game
This may sound like sort of a no-brainer to most but Calgary was struggling last week on special teams. They were allowing over 25 yards per kick return which is not good. Last week the Calgary Stampeders were fortunate to surrender just 14 points to their opponents with all the long balls they allowed and good starting field position. It is critical this week that the Stampers win the special teams field position battle as well as preventing deep balls. Ricky Ray and S.J Green will capitalize more efficiently than the Tiger-Cats if the coverage continues to be relaxed.
Complete Passes
Last week Stampeders quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell only completed 47% of his passes. That was by far the lowest completion percentage of any quarterback in the CFL last weekend. The culpability of Mitchell’s low completion percentage does not only fall on Mitchell himself, however. DaVaris Daniels caught just two passes while being targeted seven times. Kamar Jorden, despite catching a touchdown, caught just four passes in nine targets. Eric Rogers caught just one pass in five targets as well. This will likely be Bo Levi Mitchell’s top three options this week. If he can only connect with his top three targets at a 40% completion rate again then Calgary will not win this game. The most important key to the Stampeders winning this week is ensuring that Bo Levi Mitchell and his top receivers are all on the same page.
Main image credit:
Embed from Getty Images
